“Beauty reveals the Life of the Mind to Itself.”

— Unnamed French Monk at Oxford

One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;



And have been cold a long time

To behold the junipers shagged with ice,

The spruces rough in the distant glitter



Of the January sun; and not to think

Of any misery in the sound of the wind,

In the sound of a few leaves,



Which is the sound of the land

Full of the same wind

That is blowing in the same bare place



For the listener, who listens in the snow,

And, nothing himself, beholds

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. 

—“The Snow Man” by Wallace Stevens

In order to behold the image Wallace Stevens is offering in this poem, he suggests an admonition: “One must have a mind of winter”. Before beginning to reveal what it is he/we see, he asks for this pause. And in this readying, this reading, we are further chastened by the severity of the ticket-price “to regard” “these junipers shagged with ice.” Though we’re teleologically compelled toward such evergreen visions, we must realize that obtaining that degree of vitality will involve significant sacrifice (read: Suffering).

Only then, after having rendered significant clearing of concern via arduous pursuit can we hear echoes of the Holy Spirit speaking as “the sound of the wind, / In the sound of a few leaves, // Which is the sound of the land / Full of the same wind.” There is “no misery” in this simple sound which seems to somehow symbolically circle the whole of earthly creation,

And in order to receive this, we must of course open ourselves to inhale that Spirit, as Christ emptied himself (kenosis) on the Cross. This is how we begin to carry the Logos as vessel. This is the sort of theological territory of embodying the experience of Imagining True Being in the full incarnation of finite proto-divine individual being as we desire towards Theosis.

There, having become “nothing [our]sel[ves]” can behold the Ipsum Esse, No-Thing-ness which we ascribe the nomenclature Deus. “That which nothing greater can be conceived” (Anselm) which can be perceived only in glimpses via Revelation and Prophecy is a Terror (“terroire”) to us until we can fully come into it through Love (that is, the Eros of Poesophic devotion). Stevens shows us this through apophatic negation, revealing to us the implication of Everything through the dissolution of something into nothing.

Being an apologetic apostolate on the fringes of the Church while imaginatively struggling to avoid Heresy sounds like an energizing intellectual exercise. And Stevens has pushed the boundaries on the proper reverence toward Holy symbols ever since he, in his early 30s, proclaimed the “grave of Jesus, where he lay” in “Sunday Morning.” But Stevens is no brute pagan (though his neo-Platonic tendencies may well be), nor can he, by any standard terminology, be called a Christian in any Orthodox sense. And yet, as an Aesthete of a Connecticut sort, he marks religious time in his devotion to the Transcendental Nature of Beauty.

But, back to the poem.

In this epiphany at the end, that the reader/speaker can become nothing to Behold No-Thing (which seems available to conception only obliquely), we can ourselves, in our study, understand that very winter, with its junipers and leaves.

In this intellectual exercise, we are drawing out the sacred Image of the Real via imaginative endeavor. In revealing the Mind to itself, we are able to suffer without misery in order to obtain optical opening to the many things present in a seemingly barren environment — pine trees, spruce, and the sound of the wind. Without congratulating us with some sort of domestic comfort in the form of a slogan, we are being expected to participate of our own accord, and to leave with our own solitary sliver of Consciousness.

And yet, we have participated together in the reading of the Poem. In a literally Spiritual sense, we have shared a taste of the nectar of the Divine. Through this communion, we can part ways like characters in a Frost poem, and take with us that little kindling of metaphorical fire, leaving behind what is yet ever-present — “the nothing that is.”

“Farewell to an idea…The mother’s face,
the purpose of the poem, fills the room.
They are together, here, and it is warm,

with none of the prescience of oncoming dreams.
It is evening. The house is evening, half dissolved.
Only the half they can never possess remains,

still-starred. It is the mother they possess,
Who gives transparence to their present peace.
She makes that gentler that can gentle be.

— Wallace Stevens, “The Auroras of Autumn”

In Jane Campion’s marvelous biographical masterpiece Bright Star, the verse of Keats is woven throughout the dialogue sans any heavy-handed artifice. As she walks us through the last couple of years of Keats’ life, equally easily woven in is the import of his sensuously beautiful Romance with Fanny Brawne, herself a fashion and fiber artist. Much of the relationship is built around their mutual attraction, an attraction that draws on their adoration of one another’s Beauty, which involves their mutual respect as well it does their portentous openness to perception itself.

Campion situates her Keats in a scene with Brawne involving a poetry lesson. It is clear to all watching that said circumstance is simply a pretense to share proximity. And yet, despite all of the evidence that Fanny does not seem nearly as in love with poetry as is John, his character utters this small snippet of instruction which seems as poesophical as any other I might have read anywhere:

“Poetry soothes and emboldens the soul to accept mystery.”

Here it was, a brief key being given to me explaining why poetry has called to me so strongly over these decades. A pseudo-atheist former cradle Catholic suddenly finding himself in a cinder-block classroom, surrounded by quotes of poetry on the wall including the final lines of Thomas’ “Fern Hill”:

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

as I gazed down at my desk at a photocopy of “Ars Poetica” by MacLeish, “a poem should be palpable and mute.”

Most of what I was otherwise taught about reading wanted closure: Find the theme. Identify the meaning. State it propositionally. Maybe relate it to politics or to social structures. Move on to the next poem.

But close reading as spiritual practice works differently. The poem soothes you (it’s okay not to know, ambiguity is generative, mystery is real). The poem emboldens you (your attention matters, your reading creates meaning, you participate). You accept that the poem won’t resolve—and that’s not a failure. That’s training for reality.

Because reality itself refuses to resolve right now.

We’re living in the meaning crisis, in the post-truth era, where every claim to know something is immediately contested. Where tribal epistemologies have replaced shared truth. Where you can find “evidence” for any position if you look in the right echo chamber.

The easy responses: retreat to your tribe’s certainty OR give up on truth entirely.

Both are forms of death.

Poetry, on the other hand, takes us through the propositional into a new field of meaning where the sensuous aspects of delicious language trigger resonances which allow the mind to open in a natural psychedelia1, accepting seeming contradictions in synthetic wholeness. Integration. What Wallace Stevens would call a “Supreme Fiction.” It makes Religion possible.

Coleridge understood this before any of us. In the Biographia Literaria, he writes that the poet “brings the whole soul of man into activity” through imagination’s power to achieve “the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities.” Not choosing between opposites. Not compromising between them. Reconciling them—holding both at full strength simultaneously.

He lists the pairs poetry synthesizes, and then arrives at this one: “judgment ever awake and steady self-possession with enthusiasm and feeling profound or vehement.”

Judgment awake with feeling profound. This is Stevens’ mother—she who makes gentle what can be gentled (the emboldening, the active engagement) while giving transparence to present peace (the soothing, the accepting presence). She doesn’t control the dissolution, can’t possess the unpossessable half. But within what she can reach, she acts with both clarity and warmth. (And, as he claims in the “Sunday Morning” poem, “Death is the Mother of Beauty.”)

This is exactly what Jane Campion’s line names: poetry soothes (the feeling, the opening, the acceptance of mystery) and emboldens (the judgment, the discernment, the capacity to engage). The ability to live in “eternal lines to time.” Both movements at once. The dual capacity which has become vital in the post-truth era.

Because here’s where we are: Either you harden into certainty—”You’re wrong, I’m right”—all judgment, no feeling. Or you collapse into relativism—”Who can say what’s true?”—all feeling, no judgment. Emboldened without being soothed makes you rigid. Soothed without being emboldened makes you weak.

Neither can navigate actual complexity. Neither can encounter another human being whose ground of being differs radically from yours while maintaining both compassion and intellectual integrity.

We are in real need of reconciliation, and poetry—real poetry, the kind that won’t let you settle for easy resolution—trains exactly this capacity.

Consider what Keats does when he stands before the Grecian urn.

He’s looking at an artifact, a piece of fired clay decorated with figures from Greek life—a piper, a lover pursuing his beloved, a priest leading a heifer to sacrifice, a town now empty because its citizens have gone to some eternal ritual. These are mortal scenes, human scenes. People doing what people do: making music, falling in love, worshipping gods, building community.

But they’re frozen. The lovers will never kiss. The piper’s song will never change. The town will remain forever depopulated, its citizens perpetually elsewhere. Every figure caught mid-motion, mid-breath, mid-life.

And Keats, standing there, feels the peculiar ache of it:

Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Do not grieve, he says. Because even though you’ll never complete the kiss, even though you’re stuck forever in that moment of approach, at least she’ll never fade. Your love is preserved exactly at its peak—pure longing, pure beauty, untouched by time’s corruption.

This is the bargain the urn offers: immortality in exchange for completion. You get to last forever, but you never get to have what you’re reaching for. The lover approaches but never arrives. The piper plays but the song never resolves. The priest leads the sacrifice but it’s never consummated.

The urn holds the “half they can never possess”—Stevens’ phrase fits perfectly here. What the figures possess is eternal presence. What they cannot possess is fulfillment, resolution, the actual consummation of what they’re eternally moving toward.

And yet Keats recognizes something profound about this limitation. He addresses the piper:

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone

The unheard melody is sweeter. Not because it’s better in some abstract sense, but because it exists in the realm of pure possibility, intimating aspiration toward Goodness, untainted by the compromises of actual performance. The piper plays to the spirit, not the sensual ear. This is participatory truth—truth encountered through sustained attention rather than possessed through propositional statement.

We mortals, we who live in time, we who actually consummate our kisses and hear our melodies and complete our sacrifices—we get fulfillment but lose permanence. Everything fades. The kiss ends. The song stops. The beloved ages. This is the human condition: we possess what we experience, but nothing stays.

The urn’s figures get the opposite bargain: permanence without fulfillment. They stay forever but never complete. And Keats, looking at them, recognizes both the beauty and the tragedy of this. They don’t suffer time’s corruption—“nor ever can those trees be bare”—but they also never get to be fully. They’re caught between being and non-being, between motion and stillness, between longing and satisfaction.

This is mortality trying to touch immortality and finding you can only have one or the other.

But, unlike our lives which are lived under the presupposition that we shall die, the urn persists, each of its ancient emblems nevertheless perpetually fresh. And Keats, tasting this imaginal fruit, has the audacity to claim:

When old age shall this generation waste,

Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

Keats is imagining what the urn, the vessel of death, is saying to we who are sure to die.

He’s not claiming beauty and truth are identical in the propositional sense. He’s saying: when you encounter beauty this deeply—when you really apprehend this artifact, imagine these figures, sit with the peculiar ache of their perfect embodiment of eternal incompletion—you encounter a brief flash of the Love which mothers Beauty, Goodness, and Truth. Not as abstract principle but as participant reality, emptied in kenosis like the urn which is real because it can be imagined.

The truth he’s encountered: We mortals must make do with limitation. We get time or we get eternity, but not both. We get fulfillment or we get permanence. We possess what fades or we preserve what we can never fully have. This is the structure of reality. And accepting this structure—really accepting it, down to the bone—is what makes life bearable. And poetry allows us to hold this like the urn, to experience in imaginal wisdom the eternity always already available to us when we center our minds and voices in prayer.

The urn emboldens him: but your attention to beauty matters. Your sustained looking, your imaginative engagement with these frozen figures, your capacity to see truth through beauty—this creates meaning. You participate. You make something of what’s given.

And goodness? It’s there in the formation happening. Keats is becoming someone who can hold this paradox—mortality and eternity, possession and loss, time and timelessness—without needing to resolve it. He’s being gentled by what can be gentled. The urn can’t give him immortality. But it can give him a way of seeing that makes his mortality meaningful.

Beauty forms you for truth (the urn’s beauty teaches him reality’s structure). Truth orients you toward goodness (understanding limitation teaches him how to live rightly with it). Goodness completes you in beauty (the capacity to see beauty despite—because of—limitation is itself the good life).

We mortals don’t get to possess eternal truth or perfect beauty or complete goodness. We get glimpses. Fragments. Artifacts that point toward what we can’t fully grasp. The urn is “still-starred”—distant, beautiful, eternal—but we can’t possess it. We can only look, imagine, let it work on us.

And that’s everything.

When you practice with poems this way—really sit with them, let them work on you over days or weeks—you’re learning to hold judgment (discernment about what’s actually true) with feeling (openness to mystery, to what you can’t fully grasp). You’re practicing the mother’s dual power: making gentle what can be gentled while accepting what remains unpossessable.

And once you’ve trained this way with poems, you can do it with people.

Someone from a different tribe says something you find deeply mistaken. The old way: immediately evaluate content, debate, try to win. The new way: listen to source first. Where is this coming from? What ground of being produces this claim?

The soothing movement: I can’t know their full ground of being from one statement. Their suffering is real even if I judge their claim false. The mystery of how we arrived at such different conclusions is real. I accept I can’t propositionally resolve this.

The emboldening movement: And I maintain clear judgment. Not all claims are equally true. This particular claim, as I understand reality, does violence to what’s actually real. I don’t abandon my discernment to false empathy.

Like the mother in Stevens’ poem: you gentle what can be gentled. You can engage the person, hear their humanity, remain open to their ground of being. But you can’t possess their certainty, can’t control their conclusions, can’t resolve the mystery of difference. Some things remain unpossessable. The half you cannot have.

But within what you can reach—your own attention, your own judgment, your own capacity for both compassion and discernment—you act with both warmth and clarity. Both movements. Simultaneously.

This is compassionate empathy that maintains intellectual integrity. This is how you navigate the meaning crisis without losing either your mind or your heart.

We’re saying farewell to an idea—the idea that propositional knowing alone can save us, that better arguments will resolve our differences, that we can possess truth the way we possess facts.

The house is evening, half dissolved. Things are falling apart. Tribal epistemologies have replaced shared ground. Every claim is contested. The center, as Yeats knew, cannot hold.

And what remains? Only the half we can never possess: the mystery, the other’s ground of being, the unpossessable eternal that the urn figures reach for but never grasp.

But we experience the mother. We possess the capacity to be soothed (accept what we cannot control) and emboldened (engage what we can shape). We possess poetry’s training—the ability to hold judgment awake with feeling profound. We possess, if we practice it, the consciousness that can encounter beauty and let it form us for truth toward goodness.

“She makes that gentler that can gentle be.”

Like the shape of the mind and body via daily prayer, like the urn that holds the ash of those who have preceded us, poetry patterns our lives in an embrace of Love that guides us through all variety of misfortune, ever finding new experience waking us into dreams of yet vaster verity. It mothers us, and its sweet fruits ripen in our wildernesses as we awaken into birth.

“Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,

Within whose burning bosom we devise

Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.

—Stevens, “Sunday Morning”

I'm reading for my Bible and poetry class on Versed. It's Sunday morning, and I have my composition book out, Sharpie S-Gel at the quick.

I'm somewhere in Rome. It's sometime in the middle of the 1st century.

The letter is in Greek. David Bentley Hart is translating Paul, who writes:

"Therefore I implore you, brothers, by God's mercies, to present your bodies as a living, holy, acceptable sacrifice to God, your rational worship; And do not be configured to this age, but be transformed by renewal of the intellect, so you may test the will of God, which is good and acceptable and perfect." (Romans 12:1-2)

I'd been studying classical rhetorical anthropology, how the ancient Greeks and Romans understood human personhood via four dimensions:

Language, Time, Bodies, and Relation.

Paul, naturally and seemingly without premeditation, is hitting all four.

He is identifying himself as one teacher in an emerging culture of people who had been influenced by another teacher who was no longer here, writing from somewhere around Corinth to somewhere in Rome to people he may or may not have ever met or even known second-hand through anyone else, who also somehow were following “the Way” of this now-absent teacher, before any of the Gospel accounts had been written, trying to meet them where they were and attempting to work with them to organize their growing movement, a movement which for some couple centuries would be persecuted to varying degrees.

And I am reading him two thousand years later, in North America, a couple of centuries after a Republic had been founded on the assets of stolen land, in which what had become the State Religion in Rome (which now no longer exists) has become a fragmented kind of de facto religion almost everywhere around me, although no two people will ever really sound like they’re agreeing on what it means to be what is now called “Christian,” without basically citing a line of poetry and never giving a coherent explication.

I cannot be transformed without understanding these dimensions. Obviously, there’s language (and so much of it! and so many kinds!), without which there’d be no speaking or writing. And how long or short my expression and, perhaps most importantly, when it hits, when the speech or piece is being heard or read, and how its themes relate to the past and the future—this defines the context for you, you in your body, who’s reading this right now. And my body, how I treat it and how you treat yours, what my habit patterns tend to be, how I grow visibly emphatic here and nervous here (and, again, how all these things relate to you), is my instrument. And in that understanding of you, in the types of phrases or examples I choose, in my suspicions about your assumptions (which may or may not be challenged), and in whether I’m trustworthy, etc. etc. define our relation.

Language — We're creatures of logos. We think in words, organize reality through speech, make meaning through articulation. This isn't optional or cultural—it's constitutive. You can't be human without language.

Time — We exist in temporal succession. We remember, we anticipate, we're always caught between past and future. We age. We change. We're shaped by history and oriented toward what's coming.

Bodies — Whatever else we are, we're material. We occupy space. We get tired. We need food, rest, care. Any account of human existence that ignores embodiment isn't describing humans—it's describing abstractions.

Relation — We don't exist in isolation. We're formed by relationships, embedded in communities, constituted by our connections. The solitary individual is a philosophical fiction. Actual humans are always already relational.

These aren’t rhetorical devices. They’re observations about reality. The Greek and Roman thinkers got something right: you can’t give a complete account of human existence without addressing all four dimensions.

Paul is not writing a treatise on rhetorical anthropology. He's making an urgent theological argument about transformation. He's telling the Christians in Rome: offer yourselves to God, don't conform to this age, be transformed by renewal of your mind.

And notice what happens. In two verses, Paul naturally touches all four dimensions:

Time: “This age” (tō aiōni toutō) versus the age to come. You exist in temporal succession, caught between two ages. Paul commands you not to let this particular era—with its patterns, assumptions, and configurations—shape your form. The transformation happens now, continuously (the present imperative “be transformed” implies ongoing action). You’re not waiting for some future eschatological rescue. The renewal is happening in ordinary time, day by day.

Bodies: “Present your bodies” (parastēsai ta sōmata hymōn)—not your souls, not your good intentions, your actual flesh. The site where sacrifice happens is material, physical, vulnerable. Paul knows what he’s asking. A living sacrifice means your embodied presence in the world, the hands that type comments, the knees that kneel at Mass, the eyes that read Scripture with a Sharpie in hand.

This is why Hart’s translation hits so hard: you can’t spiritualize your way out of the body. The transformation Paul describes requires your whole embodied self showing up in space and time.

The “renewal of the intellect” Paul describes leads to testing “the will of God”—I’m in ongoing dialogue with divine intention, discerning together what’s “good and acceptable and perfect.” My transformation happens in relation to God, in relation to the community, embedded in the actual relationships that constitute my life.

The Greek and Roman rhetors were right about what humans are. Paul agrees—but he redirects it. You don't transcend these dimensions through transformation. You reorient them toward God.

Transformation and Renewal

This matters because it means transformation isn't some mystical extraction from ordinary existence. It's the reorientation of what you already are.

When I was drinking heavily, all four dimensions were oriented one way—toward destruction, resentment, self-medication. That's not because I was following some dark rhetorical framework. It's because humans are linguistic, temporal, embodied, and relational creatures, and mine were all aimed at the wrong things.

That was one configuration. One orientation of the four dimensions that constitute human existence.

Now—slowly, imperfectly, one day at a time—those same four dimensions are being reoriented.

None of this is mystical or abstract. It's what transformation actually looks like when it happens to a creature who is linguistic, temporal, embodied, and relational. Paul knew what he was talking about. The Greek and Roman rhetors knew what humans are. And transformation, when it's real, touches all four dimensions—because there's no other way to transform a human being.

Paul reinforces this knowledge, and gives it a conceptual aim: Present my body. Renew my intellect. Test the will of God.

It happens in my words and deeds, over time, in my flesh, in relation to others. Not because that's a clever rhetorical structure, but because that's what it means to be human—and transformation, when it's real, transforms the whole person.

And here I am, as are you. And, as ever, I am grateful for this experience, this opportunity.

Thanks be to God.

Appreciatively,

Aaron

Or, at least, I thought I did.

It was always in my consciousness as a reminder, this is not the Way.

The way I was living was selfish and destructive, in ways I couldn't know.

Now as an adult, I know about attachment styles, how the body stores trauma, and how being a male requires extra effort to establish compassion and generosity.

For many years, I thought that the Church’s emphasis on sin and confession was tyrannical, a means of forcing order, creating meek and submissive followers.

I still might believe aspects of that now, although I also see it as a means of mental liberation.

When I pray for Mercy and Forgiveness, when I open my heart to God via the eternal Logos, Christ, I feel deep gratitude and peace.

All this time in therapy, acquiring all of the rational tools—this was useful, and at times quite helpful.

But what I really needed to do was say I'm sorry, to really feel in the marrow of my bones that I longed for forgiveness, for someone to hear my guilt.

Shame has been turned into a taboo. I’m told it's a stigmatizing word, that focusing on “mental health” or “disease” as a medical category strips away the unnecessary idea that I am “bad,” allegedly removing prohibitive language and self-image.

But that has not been my experience.

When I turn to God each Mass and in my morning prayers to please forgive me “for what I have done, and what I have failed to do,” I find my mind opening up among people of good will who share my longing for forgiveness and for peace.

Rather than being something that affixes me in negative self-talk, this practice honors my true emotion, draws it out in an open air, and gives it space for the spirit to cleanse it, as it stokes the fire in my Heart for Love and Justice.

Doing this takes that sense that I am bad and relates it to the experience of all others who share in that sense, all of us perfectly imperfect.

This makes me a better man.

And it's Good to be better, it reveals the growth in my soul and person and indicates to me my progress and desire to continue.

Affectionately,

Aaron

The church, a small cathedral, has been there for 150 years.

Yesterday, they celebrated this with their annual Octoberfest, a large breakfast, craft-show raffle, and bazaar, and all-around community event.

This year, they also had a memorobilia room — full of photos and newspaper clippings describing the founding of the town, the building of the church, and directories boasting the names of communitiy members then and now.

They also had a video on loop touring ther church itself, with all of its architectural flourish and iconograpic symbolism (its high, ornate altar representing the Holy Mountain).

Spending this time with my dad is always Good, but it was especially meaningful as this week he was grieving the loss of an old friend, and sharing this tradition with him contextualized that bereavement by surrounding it with several generations of history.

But beyond the history was the people here right now, many of them descendents of those very first congregants, many of them elderly, but many of them babies and young kids.

Being among them, enjoying all the liveliness, the fresh apples and baked goods, the festival vibe, I prayed many thanks for this bounty which surrounds me.

People coming together in spiritual union, in praise, in celebration.

And myself fortunate enough to be among them, reading newspapers from the twenties and spending time with my Dad, and getting to share that experience with you.

As we near Hallowtide, that holiday remembering the dead, in preparation of the coming Winter, I feel more compelled then ever to steep in this marvelous dynamic—spirited by breath giving body to these words.

I pray they may be loving, kind, compassionate and true.

Affectionately,

Aaron

The Universal Cry for Help

"Deus in adiutorium meum intende, Domine ad adiuvandum me festina" "O God, come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste to help me."

At 3:30 AM on a Friday morning in July 2025, in a bedroom in Evansdale, Iowa, these ancient Latin words spontaneously emerged from sleep into consciousness—without thinking, without effort, just the soul's natural reflex reaching for divine assistance.

The Sacred Source

This prayer springs from Psalm 70:

"Make haste, O GOD, to deliver me; make haste to help me, O LORD."

What began as King David's urgent plea for divine rescue has become the Church's daily invocation, repeated millions of times across centuries and continents.

The Living Tradition

The Desert Fathers (4th Century)

John Cassian recorded that from Christianity's earliest days, monks used this prayer constantly—not just in formal liturgy, but as a continuous spiritual companion. When the mind wandered, when temptation arose, when the soul felt vulnerable: "God, come to my assistance..."

St. Benedict's Innovation (6th Century)

St. Benedict formally incorporated this prayer into the monastic Office, making it the opening invocation for every Hour of prayer. His genius was recognizing that spiritual practice needs divine assistance from the very first word.

Papal Extension (6th Century)

St. Gregory I extended Benedict's custom to all Roman churches, universalizing what had been a monastic innovation. The prayer that began in desert caves now echoed in basilicas and parish churches throughout the Christian world.

The Universal Hours

Today, this prayer opens every Hour of the Liturgy of the Hours:

• Lauds (Morning Prayer)

• Terce (Mid-Morning Prayer)

• Sext (Midday Prayer)

• None (Mid-Afternoon Prayer)

• Vespers (Evening Prayer)

• Compline (Night Prayer)

Exception: The last three days of Holy Week and the Office of the Dead

The Timeless Community

When these words emerge spontaneously—whether at 3:30 AM in Iowa, or in a monastery in France, or from a busy parent stealing a moment of prayer—you join an unbroken chain:

4th Century: Desert hermits in Egyptian caves 6th Century: Benedictine monks in Italian monasteries
Medieval Era: Cathedral clergy chanting the Hours Renaissance: Missionaries carrying the prayer to new continents Modern Day: Catholics worldwide praying the Breviary

The Sacred Purpose

The Church places this supplication at the beginning of every Hour to implore divine assistance against distractions in prayer. It acknowledges a fundamental truth: we cannot pray worthily by our own power. We need help to help ourselves.

The Mystical Recognition

That this prayer can surface without conscious effort—emerging naturally from sleep, from crisis, from the depths of the soul—reveals how deeply spiritual practice can integrate with human consciousness. The words become as natural as breathing, as immediate as a reflex.

We are never praying alone. Every time we cry "God, come to my assistance," we join our voice to:

• David's original psalm

• Cassian's desert wisdom

• Benedict's monastic vision

• Gregory's universal embrace

• Millions across the globe today

• Countless souls across fifteen centuries

The Continuing Prayer

Right now, as you read this, somewhere in the world:

• A Benedictine monk is chanting Vespers

• A busy mother is stealing a moment for Midday Prayer

• A priest is beginning Lauds before dawn

• A contemplative is finding rest in Compline

All opening with the same ancient cry: "God, come to my assistance..."

And when those words came to you at 3:30 AM, you were not alone in the darkness. You were united to the eternal prayer of the Church, adding your voice to the song that began with David and will continue until the end of time.

This is the power of the Hours: they make us citizens of eternity, members of a community that transcends time and space, united in humanity's most fundamental recognition—that we need divine help, and that help is always available to those who ask.

Growing up, this was a common refrain in my household.

Parents will recognize the logic — sometimes a The moody person is simply tired.

As an adult, this recognition in oneself can be harder to recognize, and even harder to act upon.

For starters, we don’t have the luxury. It’s not feasible to walk away from work, say, to take a half hour to rest.

But more than that, whatever stresses we’re facing will still be there even if we were to take a break.

This is where the clutch becomes infinitely valuable to me.

Whereas before I was pushing, pushing, working combatively toward what I believed needed to be done immediately, I can take a moment to remove a bunch of unnecessary pressure.

Whatever five things were pressing on me, I can free up cognitive and physical space by realizing “now is not the time for all of these things.”

“Now is the time that I can focus on just this one thing.”

And focus doesn’t need to be forced.

One can simply set the intention to go through the motion, realigning the body to perform only the requisite task.

Now the energy required is much less, and the task can be performed more gracefully, and with less strain.

Because sometimes the motions are all that’s required — and when I can break everything down to this one essential thing, I find I have energy stores of which I was previously unaware.

A lot of the actual energy I was spending was being wasted on fretting — the fallacious belief that I was going to suddenly be freed of all of my stress if I just did the one correct thing.

But life isn’t like that. Many of the “things” need to be put on back-burners awaiting the appropriate moment.

Let the unconscious deal with all of that. Right now, I am confronted with this one simple task.

How easy! And yet how difficult to arrive at this moment.

This is what has been conventionally called Mindfulness, a useful skill that has been homogenized by corporate fads, but which still packs a punch.

If you’ve been around Buddhist circles, as I have, you may have heard a common refrain which breaks this down in another way.

“Not too tight, not too loose.”

If the string on a violin is strung too tight, the pitch will be sharp — and you could break a string that way.

If it’s too loose, no music.

That’s why the Buddha practiced the Middle Way. Translations of the eight-fold path often begin with the word “Right,” as in “correct” or “proper.”

We must have “appropriate” concentration, “appropriate” effort, “appropriate” action.

In sobriety circles, this is talked about in terms of being “right-sized” — sacrificing an element of the ego in order to establish a more peaceful composure and “giving it [the worry and the fearful assumptions] up to God.”

Easier said than done, I know, I know. Which is why the visualization of pressing my foot down onto the clutch has been so helpful for me.

This imaginal power works on the psyche much more quickly and efficiently than rational thought.

Too many thoughts, too much confusion.

I hope that this message finds you well, and that you are successful in confronting stress today.

If not, maybe you just need a nap. Tomorrow’s another day.

With fond wishes and a true desire for your peace and happiness, 

I am

Yours, Appropriately, 


Aaron

It’s a strong critique, and one I wrestle with every day. I consider myself an optimist, but I qualify the term and look at the word itself to wrench out what I believe to be its truer meaning.

As an optimist, I don’t simply believe that we’re going to have a fairy tale outcome, rather I believe that it’s my responsibility to optimize what I have available to me.

In short, it’s an exercise in gratitude — a cognitive practice which has some empirical evidence in efficacy for combating the more destructive manifestations of depression.

Life is, in many respects, murderous and unmerciful.

People who don’t deserve power get power. Laws are changed or ignored which seek to help the weakest people. Inequity abounds, particularly around class, gender, and race.

State religions sometimes seem at best a palliative, and at worst a feel-good silliness that offers license for selfish and exploitative behavior. And even worse a social code built to oppress and control.

All these things are true and, despite all of these realities, the traditions of Philosophy remain.

This is the lamplight I keep trimmed and burning.

Similarly, when one reads the Enchiridion (the Handbook) of Epictetus, or the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, its easy to come away thinking “this is a denial of who we are as people — this philosophy is one of robots.”

The way I read these texts is not as instruction for how to be or what to believe, but rather how to challenge your own mind to build resilience and make room for happiness.

Happiness is one of those slippery words, and can be thought to mean some kind of pleasurable state.

That’s partly why I don’t generally use it. Pleasurable states are lovely, but are spaced few and far between what sometimes seem far greater bouts of ennui and frustration.

Buddhism is sometimes leveled with the critique that it argues passivity in the face of injustice and exploitation, that training the mind to hold a perspective of compassion is a cop-out, and an excuse to remain idle while the world goes to pot and authoritarians take control of everything.

Again, a real critique, and one to sit with and absorb.

And, on a human level, on a day to day basis I, Aaron James McNally, come into contact, interact, and participate with living homo sapiens who, like me, are in possession of Mind, who carry in their bodies the learning of lived experience, and who yearn to find a basic sense of balance in a threatening world.

The so called ideologies which are said to divide us are often seen as the fictions which they are when it comes down to participating in a common goal.

If and when this commonality is discarded, we become subject to the creations of media-makers and dictators, all of whom abound and have far greater power than they deserve, power which we give them.

Acutely aware of my lack in power and influence, I am charged by the potential to act courageously where and when that opportunity arises — sometimes by simply questioning the verity of fake news in conversation, sometimes I might need to become active in a particular political cause. (What that looks like, I’ve yet to see. I’m looking for an issue that calls to me.)

The Polis is a grand and bewildering thing, far too great for my feeble mind to comprehend. Another challenge I’m confronted with is understanding it as best I can where and when this is asked of me.

My greatest challenge in my personal life is to simply keep my relationships in good order, showing gratitude, reverence, and respect.

These give me energy and meaning, help me to tear down walls of isolation and remind me that I am expected to live in an honorable way. For me this includes abstaining from alcohol and taking care of my basic responsibilities.

I don’t know what that looks like for you. Everyone has a unique circumstance and a life to face.

May you find your Way, and may I, where I can, be of some small help to you.

Amiably, 

Aaron

My department completed its work early, and I had a choice.

I could either go home early, or help another department in the building.

I chose the former.

No big deal, right?

I work hard, as does my team.

It’s been a long week, and I was tired.

I am working on a lot in my own life, and wanted to get home to rest and strategize.

I I I I I

Yesterday morning, Loretta treated all of us (her department and ours) to coffee and little sweet treats.

It was magnificent — what a gesture of caring and selfless contribution.

She is a very sweet woman, always happy and smiling, warm and affectionate.

Her team was doing fine.

They were going to complete their work easily, and would not have to work overtime this week (as they usually do).

No one was going to hurt for my decision.

That said, I still consider it a mistake — so much so that this morning I prayed for forgiveness.

Why?

The easy answer is that I shouldn’t “beat myself up.”

That I made a decision for myself, and I deserve a little self-care here and there.

But I’m not beating myself up, and that’s not the answer.

The truth is that I could’ve easily amped myself up for two more hours of work, delayed my immediate gratification, and contributed not to my own selfish wants, but to the aspiration of the Whole.

I could’ve made a contributive gesture.

It would’ve been only a gesture.

On the whole, the work itself would’ve been somewhat insignificant in terms of volume and productivity.

But in terms of meaning, it would’ve been quite significant.

Instead of feeling like a lonely, selfish person, I could’ve felt like another worker in a team of other workers, and assigned to my name the characteristic of “stays after and helps others.”

Now, that’s its own form of egotism, and I’m well aware of it.

But its the kind of egotism that is (as they say in AA) “right-sized.”

In AA, it’s all about service all the time — even though most of the services people provide are arguably unnecessary.

But its also helpful.

And a culture of helpful gestures is far superior to a culture of isolated self-interest.

Because the very promise of the Liberal Arts, and of Individual sovereignty and agency is dependent upon proper and well-kept character — of participation.

In the Stoa, people were constantly helping one another, with conversation and — I assume, although we don’t have records — with support.

In Christianity, they say that “Faith without works is Dead.”

Thanks for accepting my confession, so that I don’t have to “beat myself up,” and don’t have to carry this with me into tomorrow.

As a recompense and reconciliation, I intend on talking to Loretta on Monday, just to keep my conscience clear, and make sure that she and I are on good terms.

I also plan on talking to one of my co=workers who did go over to help.

I don’t intend on making it about me, but rather to mix my thoughts and concern into a greater conversation he and I are having about growing to become better people.

To tell him, “hey, I’m not super happy with a decision I made on Thursday, and I’d like to get your thoughts on it.”

To use this error as an opportunity for greater insight and growth, making connections where I would otherwise feel isolation.

With much gratitude and well-wishes for you and your day, I am

Yours, 

Appreciatively, 

Aaron

Specifically, he invokes the Muse Calliope.

The way he does this is by literally reading aloud Homer’s invocation from The Odyssey.

This works specifically well for him, as he is interested in ancient cultures and their warfare.

He is the guy who writes a lot about “Resistance,” the term he uses to describe the psychic blocks which prevent us from doing our work.

Praying helps him overcome the fears of his ego, and enters him into a broader historical and spiritual space in which he can engage in the Imagination.

I’ve taken up this practice.

I was already praying in the morning, but now I do it right before my writing.

Because I’m Catholic, I say different prayers than Pressfield does.

A la Godin, I integrate breathwork into my recitation.

To do this, I recite the prayers internally, rather than aloud.

Inhale

Glory Be to the Father, and to the Son,

and to the Holy Spirit.

Exhale

As it was in the beginning

is Now, and ever Shall Be,

World Without End. Amen.

Inhale

Our Father, who art in Heaven,

Hallowed be Thy Name.

Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will be done

on Earth, as it is in heaven.

Exhale

Give us this day our daily bread,

and forgive us our trespasses

as we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from Evil.

For thine is the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory

Now and Forever, Amen.

Inhale

Hail Mary! Full of Grace.

The Lord is with thee.

Blessed art thou among women,

and Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Exhale

Holy Mary! Mother of God.

Pray for us sinners, Now

and at the hour of our death, Amen.

Lickety split, I’m in a headspace to compose.

I’ve offered gratitude and praise to a Power Greater than myself, asked for forgiveness for my constant state of error, and asked to please be empowered to go about my daily work.

Further, I’ve linked my mind to ancient scripture, the hierarchy of the protection of Angels and Saints, and given my consciousness up to a Greater State.

This empowers the imagination to work through me.

When my tiny, fragile, hurt ego tries to control the Imagination, the effect is a lot of fanciful scribbling.

When I acknowledge that the work of the Imagination can be tapped into and performed with reverence and attentive intention, I see the stone which can then be shaped into the sculpture of the sentence.

Whatever your spiritual tradition, there are likely practices that you, too, can do.

If you’re not a creative, the same principle applies to any other work.

In addition to the intellectual and imaginal content of the prayers, the act of breathing is essential and centering.

It connects my mind and body into an holistic entirety.

From there, I am. And so being, I create.

With fond affection. I am

Yours, Amiably,

Aaron

The most important thing to learn when driving that type of car is how to use the clutch.

The clutch puts the car into temporary neutral, giving one the opportunity to shift up, down, or even into reverse.

One had to know when to apply it, and when to release it.

This is much in the way I apply metacognition throughout the day.

Someone says something to me, and I need to figure out how to respond.

My call might be to speak, to act, to question, to change gears.

Either way, in that moment, I need to have the freedom to refrain from leaping to assumptions.

The same goes for when I can feel the approach of depression or anxiety.

Several things might be happening at the same time, and I’m not certain how to handle it.

My default is to just keep on truckin’ — but if I’m moving in the wrong direction, that may make the situation worse.

So I need the pause in acceleration, I need to recognize “Aha! I’m struggling with X, Y, and Z, and this is causing me to enter into a sub-optimum psychic state.”

Put down the clutch — now I have time to think and consider.

There’s no telling where I’m going from here, but I may have a better option than the one I was going for.

I might even need to pull over. A meal, or some sleep might be in my immediate future.

If I don’t have tools to catch myself in the moment, my tendency is to go off-track entirely.

To crash.

If I’m not in possession of my cognitive faculties, I am unable to do this.

I have dozens of tools to assist my faculties, from meditation to CBT to poetic scripture.

Any and all of them can come in handy, and they are all built into my vehicle’s driveshaft.

I’ve earned this privilege through over a decade of practice.

If I drink, I can’t even get behind the wheel of the car.

But if I realize that “It is what it is,” I don’t need to drink.

The cosmos offers me abundant resources, including my mind’s ability to consider itself.

I think of my mind as a part of my body, a part which glows in aura around it as well.

As long as I can pause, I can handle whatever is coming my way, and react accordingly.

It may not be perfect. I may be “stuck in the same place,” but at least I know where I am.

Who I am is another question — one which continues to escape and fascinate me.

Parts of me are revealed in every scenario.

Some of those parts seem essential, some seem arbitrary or context-dependent.

But here, in the center, I am aware that I Am Aware.

It’s the base of all experience, and connects me to the One.

Safe Driving.

Amiably, 

Aaron

“The pungent oranges and bright, green wings

Seem things in some procession of the dead,

Winding across wide water, without sound.” — Wallace Stevens

My life is very different than once it was. 

Growing up, there were three holidays throughout the year when I would leave my local terrain and come into contact with a greater whole. 

This was because of six specific people. On my mother's side, two great-grandparents and four grandparents. On my father's, a grand-mother and an aunt and uncle. 

These people are gone now. While they lived, there were three important holidays when everyone local to the extended family would congregate: Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas (and sometimes New Year's Eve). 

In between were birthdays and many other events. 

During this time, all of the "nuclear" families would come together to feast. 

Whatever strains I had with my parents or siblings was contextualized in a greater, extended whole. 

For these hours, I was no longer merely my mother's son, but was also one of the cousins and one of the grandchildren. 

Just as I, individually, need to get "out of my head," so, too, my immediate family needed to get out of its. 

Each smaller family's particularity was set in harmony with the greater "tribe." We belonged, simply by default, as members of a vast group of people who had five to seven generations worth of history right here in the state. 

There were, in these spaces, members of various professions. All were what you would call "working class," but each had a different set of responsibilities and skills which contributed uniquely to the distributed cognition. 

At three significant times in the Earth's cycle, these candles would contribute to a central flame. 

This has all been gone, now, for over a decade. The reason? Death. 

All is gone, but not lost. For we have today, All Souls Day. 

This is the day when we can remember the dead, and even pray for them. 

I can, of course, do this at any time. Still, it's nice to have a specific day to do it. 

I can, of course, participate with local aunts and uncles to try to create some other variant of the gatherings, although they will not be the same. 

People live elsewhere, now. And "afflictions bow [them] down to earth." 

I can, of course, embody the aspects of these characters souls which yet live. The wisdom and humor, the solid sense of duty and responsibility, and — perhaps most of all — the love. 

“A part of labor and a part of pain,

And next in glory to enduring love,

Not this dividing and indifferent blue.” — Wallace Stevens

In Catholicism, we pray "for the repose of the souls" of those departed. Part of how I do this is by celebrating the aspects of these Souls which still live in my own person and in the persons of others. 

I fail at this daily, but each morning I awake again with the aspiration to try. 

Imagining all of these Souls in a happy state, I turn from the isolation of my age toward the greater Age of ages. 

And I am Loved. 


With Adoration and Affection, 

Aaron

I found it to be refreshing and enriching.

He starts by clarifying that his teleology is much more than an “optimal brain state.” Mr. Dempsey has gone through a career from a traditional form of Christianity through Catholicism (deeply influenced by Dante), and has done significant work in apologetics before ultimately settling into Meta-Modernism as a way to see the critiques of Modernity through a new lens which accounts for Post-Modernism while maintaining a devotional approach to finding a meaningful place within the cosmos.

All that said, here is my transcription of his stated move toward a teleology. It strives toward a “christogenesis” which aspires toward an “omega point.”

“The progression of complexification leading to deeper consciousness, greater autonomy, greater care, greater agape, greater love in every sense, and to the unification (the integration and differentiation, simultaneously) leading to this maximally complex reality.”

I look forward to your letters.

Attendantly,

Aaron

“I ask for you to grant me a wee dram of poetic license.”

Yesterday, I was privileged to espy a dialogue between John Vervaeke, Rick Repetti, and the Magnificent Mark Miller.

It was a marvelous discussion, but the highlight was the final plug at the end of the show, when I learned that Dr. Miller hosts his own Contemplative Science Podcast. Despite the chilly weather, I enjoyed two episodes of this on a long walk.

Some of you may recall my affection for Dr. Miller’s assessment of the negative feedback loop that is known as “addiction.” Whether we’re talking about substance dependency, or merely how to break cycles that trigger us to become embroiled in the stews of anxiety/depression, discussing this idea of a feedback loop is probably one of the most important things we might be doing these days.

Which brings me to another talk I binged this day last. In this one, with Todd Hargrove, the Good Doctor talks about one technique which can be used to thwart some of these sorts of problems

— that of the Gratitude Journal.

“For anyone who’s listening today — I’m a long term meditator, and long term meditation teacher as well. Early on in my career, I was really passionate about the really deep attention and awareness-training programs. Really hardcore, teaching attention to be exclusive, doing long term retreats. . .

That’s all good stuff, but I’ll tell you — after twenty years of practice, looking back now — I think the most powerful practice I know is a gratitude practice. It’s the most transformative practice I know.

It’s not some kind of little side practice. It’s the practice.

And here’s why [it helps to] focus on the things that are working.

At first that feels really weird — one of the reasons why it might feel really weird is because it’s antithetical to some of the belief structures you have in play, and that’s a good sign.

(Of course, if you’re in a situation where things really aren’t working well, then we’re not talking about putting on rose-tinted glasses, or not working through the things you’re working on.)

But starting to jeopardize some of those strong beliefs that nothing is going right is so valuable for us. And it can start very small, and as soon as the system catches it it takes on a life of its own.

And we have some good evidence that even people with major depression can benefit from this. They did a study where they took people with really serious, long-term depression, and they gave them beepers. And they beeped them randomly, and asked them to write down what mood they were in, and what they were thinking about, and everything else.

Before the study, they asked [the clients] “how often are you depressed?” And [the clients] said “I’m depressed all the time. I wake up depressed, I live depressed, I fall asleep depressed. I’m always in pain. What is this question?! I’m here at the hospital. I’m in crisis. I’m always in crisis.”

But when they actually beeped them, they found that 80-90 percent of the time they weren’t. That it was only 10-15 percent of the time they were.

Now I don’t mean to downplay that. 15 percent of the time is a huge amount of time to feel like you’re in crisis. But the fact is lots of good stuff was happening, too, but it wasn’t being picked up by the system. It was like the system was largely ignoring the neutral and positive things that were happening, and continuing to construct this reality.

That’s one of the take-home messages that I find so powerful by considering this framework. The world you live in is being created in part from the top down, based on your beliefs. So, if you have some bad beliefs, you could really be living in a different world than if you had some other beliefs, some different beliefs.

So, something like Gratitude is huge. That positive feedback loop is massive.”

As echoed above, he goes on to say that sometimes making changes in the world is not only beneficial, but even necessary. But without the framework of some positive beliefs, without some pro-active and affirmative offense against the negative loop, one is not going to have the clarity or even the energy to make those necessary changes. (Or, perhaps, even to be able to see how to find help to gain those things.)

Sounds like an Ideal worthy of Pursuit.

II.

Welp, today at Mass, on the 1st Sunday of Lent, I heard tell of a folk story that personifies a similar strategy. Instead of a hero keeping a Gratitude journal, this came in the form of Christ going to the desert to confront the Slanderer (also known as the Tempter).

The Slanderer’s mission is entirely thwarted. This is not because the things he offered were not in some sense valuable, or wouldn’t be seen as attractive by most of us. They were instead presented as significant in a way which was objectionable to the Christ’s vision of Wholeness and Virtue (Eudaimonia, the flourishing spirit which arises from a life well-lived).

Like the Buddha (who had been liberated from the cycle of Samsara by the cessation of desire and aversion through the transcendence of the notions of Brahman and Atman that accompanies the Way of the Noble Eightfold Path), Christ (whose early adherents were also said to follow “the Way”) was simply not subject to the whims of desire and aversion.

He saw an Ultimate version of reality which he called “God.” He saw clearly that the Way of God was one which had life-affirming power. Because of the intensity of this worldview, secondary concerns which would threaten the health and wholeness of his Being were simply not desirable.

III.

It may not seem immediately apparent that this kind of mythopoetic vision has a lot of overlap with the type of cognitive re-framing in part l of this essay.

I ask for you to grant me a wee dram of poetic license.

While the bit about feedback loops has more to do with recognizing a modicum of fortune where there appears to be none but despair, and the stories of the Sages being more about their immunity to both misfortune and delight, I contend that there is a sonorant consonance between the related ideas.

And it is this: if we see life as being something to which we might as well resign ourselves, everything which comes across our path that threatens our sense of wholeness and well being seems an harbinger of a foreboding inevitability.

If we shift our consciousness through practice to instead give our heartminds to an ideal, we can find ourselves undergoing the metanoia sometimes called “repentance.” (Last night I heard Larry King talking of how he had been “scared straight” so as to no longer desire cigarettes after a close call with a cardiac arrest.)

To begin the process of cognitive restructuring, it might seem at first that one is nearly lying to oneself. But there’s a change of mind (meta-noia) which is not only obtainable, but even probable, provided one has the will to choose to have faith in it despite its seeming invisibility.

Moving toward this Grace, one can simply “trust the process” and know that, however far-fetched it may seem, whatever comes on the other end is better that this thing we see now.

From a strictly skeptical rationalism, this seems naive and foolish. From the vantage of Cognitive Science, it seems certain to an extent that could easily become consensus.

As they sometimes say in 12-Step groups, “More will be revealed. . .”

As every Sunday, we entered about ten or fifteen minutes before the service began, as the congregation was participating in praying the Rosary.

This is always blessed for me, as it allows me (after genuflecting and giving the Sign) to fall onto my knees and into a repetition of the prayer to the Holy Mary, mother of God. Each decade of ten repetitions is punctuated with a Glory Be to the entire Trinity, then a prayer to Jesus asking for forgiveness, and finally an Our Father to God expressly.

“There have only ever been two perfect people,” the Priest claimed during an appropriately brief homily. “Mary and Jesus.”

The rest of us, he reminded, must attend to our own internal conflicts through the Sacrament of Confession, offering up our faults in an attempt to cleanse and purge our worry, that we might find peace in this brief world.

Paraphrases mine.

Keep on keepin’ on, Mah People. You’re doing Good Work, and we need You.

Don’t stop. Don’t Nevah. Don’t’chu Evah. As Spoon sang it “Cause We gonna keep ‘em Hangin’ Around.”

You are a Blessed Being. Never Forget. That doesn’t make you a Saint, and it doesn’t make you Perfect. But it does equip you with a marvelous level of Strength, Strength for which many thirst.

Keep it, and offer it medicinally. You are the Beautiful. Take. Eat. Drink.

When I studied and practiced at the Milarepa Vajrayana center, I heard a charming anecdote.

At a retreat, my teacher Ellenmarie told me, a student had asked the Rinpoche about the deities they'd been visualizing.

“Are the deities real?” the student asked.

“At least as real as you or I,” the Rinpoche responded.

People have trouble with deities (and Angels, and even Saints) because they challenge us to suspend our disbelief. We don't like doing that, because we don't want to feel silly, and are afraid that putting faith in this imaginal realm is childish.

The Rinpoche’s response was brilliant. Sure, it's hard to imagine a deity, let alone pray to one. But I, myself, as an ego-persona, don't really exist either. Who I am fluctuates from moment to moment, situation to situation and, while I might seem like an objective thing to which you can refer, I'm actually always changing. The body I inhabit loses and regains new cells, replacing itself, and my ego-persona is something of a realistic illusion that serves the purpose of allowing you and I to interact with one another.

This is a core tenant of Buddhist philosophy, the mutability of all things and the illusory nature of the Self. In liberating oneself from the endless cycle of suffering and desire (rebirth), one of the first steps is to recognize that the self itself is not a fixed or concrete thing.

Cognitive science and contemporary psychology have learned that we can better withstand pressure and solve problems by thinking of our situation in the third person. Instead of thinking “This is happening to me,” I can think “Aaron was confronted with…” This is a handy mode of conceptualization which can have a legitimately positive effect. It offsets the pressure, and helps the mind to gain insight, seeing the trouble more clearly, and with more power to determine alternatives.

When praying the other day, I realized that something similar goes on when we address a personal God. As I address this “person” called “God,” I am shifting the emphasis of how I think about my situation. Instead of it being all about me, I'm talking to a second person, re-framing the narrative such that I can talk about the situation I'm confronting. This is a substantially different sensation than simply thinking about, or even contemplating or meditating on, the problem. It suddenly becomes something I can gain distance from, something I can assess and evaluate.

Many a non-theist and agnostic have professed that they do not believe in a personal God. As far as whether there's an actual, singular being who is intimately related to you — I'm equally skeptical. And even during petitionary prayer, I don't think that the point is to come up with a wish list, hoping for presents.

Instead, I think that a large part of the benefit of prayer (even petitionary prayer) is that unique breed of perspective which allows us to uniquely see what just what it is we're confronting.

When I'm actually praying to that second person, that person is at least as real as I am (even if it technically resides in my imagination). And when I ask them for strength to maintain emotional composure as I face life's challenges, they are listening (even if they are actually me). And that affords me confidence and composure, and ultimately agency.

How this relates to the origin of the cosmos? I know not, but I do know that it has something to do with how Sapiens relate to it. For all of the legitimate skepticism toward prayer, it is still practiced the world round (and by all manner of people). And I do think there's something to be said for the hypothesis that whatever we do to better attune our consciousness to have right relation with the world around us, the more connected we are to some kind of basic, underlying truth.

That may be hard to believe. But it's worth the investment of good faith.

(Before we think we can simply do this as he did, it is essential to note that he lived purely — free from the errors triggered by lust and malicious motivations. He was able to do this effortlessly. We, on the other hand, must work to come into touch with our divine orientations, and it takes practice and commitment, dedication, and forgiveness of self and others. In dukkha’s endless spiral of desire and aversion, we must reset ourselves each day, accepting our failures and the failures of others, praying for sustenance and insight toward Wisdom.)

It could be said that Christ consciousness, the unity of the man with the Holy Spirit, is the advent of Distributed Cognition. The Law had worked toward this through the advent of writ and debate, but it now became potentially embodied within the whole of the Church of the Faithful, provided we practice with unity and embody the principles, taking for granted where possible the good will of the other, and trusting they will forgive us our errors as we forgive theirs.

This becomes, in some important sense, Modernity, with its aspirations toward collective liberation from the constraints of the threats of the world, although (as we see each day) we fail and fail and fail. The moment we take it for granted, it fails. When we critique it in such a way so as to become cynical, it fails. When the algorithms take us into our foxholes of isolation, when we silo into online groups who reinforce our biases, when we start to see the other as a foreigner unknowable to us, we fail and fail and fail.

We each have limited cognitive bandwidth. (Some may seem to have more or less — although I’m suspicious that is innate as much as circumstantial, which says as much about our education system as it does anything else). We have the potential to be self-aware, and can imagine the same kind of self-awareness in others. We can influence, but not control (else we become evil, violent, authoritarian and dictatorial). We can participate. We can invest in the process of becoming and being, take on perspectives and experience vistas of vantage even within our own minds (which are part of the divine mind).

Tonight we light the final candle on the wreath. We celebrate the birth itself, this awakening to the suffering of the World, the embodiment within it, the sacrifices that women make to render it possible. Tonight we celebrate Potential becoming Expression, omnipresent and eternal.

“O pure of heart! thou need'st not ask of me

What this strong music in the soul may be!

What, and wherein it doth exist,

This light, this glory, this fair luminous mist,

This beautiful and beauty-making power.

         Joy, virtuous Lady! Joy that ne'er was given,

Save to the pure, and in their purest hour,

Life, and Life's effluence, cloud at once and shower,

Joy, Lady! is the spirit and the power,

Which wedding Nature to us gives in dower

         A new Earth and new Heaven,

Undreamt of by the sensual and the proud—

Joy is the sweet voice, Joy the luminous cloud—

                We in ourselves rejoice!

And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight,

         All melodies the echoes of that voice,

All colours a suffusion from that light.” — Coleridge

St. Paul to the Thessalonians

Always be joyful;

17 pray ceaselessly;

18 and for all things give thanks — this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.

19 Do not stifle the Spirit

20 or despise the gift of prophecy with contempt;

21 test everything and hold on to what is good

22 and shun every form of evil.

23 May the God of peace make you perfect and holy; and may your spirit, life and body be kept blameless for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

24 He who has called you is trustworthy and will carry it out.